Tor. Still in progress. Had to set it aside a bit because the past two weeks were a lot of bug fixing. But we'll get to that. Not much movement here I'm afraid, but back on that this upcoming week.
Themes. They launched. Then we made tweaks and updates. Pretty neat little thing we got going on now. Since initial launch we've now added things like updating a theme from within an app when there is an update to one (as opposed to before when you had to delete and reinstall). They're out, and we cut the app size like in half. People are pretty thrilled, and we are too.
Tons and tons and tons of bugfixes. We fixed Epic Cash so it works perfectly now. We fixed Firo so it works (mostly) perfectly now. We made some fixes and tweaks to Bitcoin and its derivatives. So many bug fixes. I personally got sick of all the support requests for things that were our fault so I reprioritized the team to focus on cleanup these past couple weeks. I think it really shows now. The support requests have dropped off dramatically at least.
Monero privacy fix. Had to update the underlying Monero version because Monero had a big privacy bug. Not something we introduced, but something that was in Monero itself. They fixed it. We applied their fix. Easy. Done.
Misc. Custom PIN lengths are done. A release is coming in the next couple of days for Stack and Duo both with this change. Requested often as some people are uncomfortable with just a 4 number PIN.
New coins. eCash was added. Nano is 90% done for being added. Banano (the meme coin equivalent of Nano) would be an easy add right afterwards.
Podcast. We started a podcast. The StackCast. We've got two episodes uploaded so far. Check them out on our YouTube channel. Our first two interviewes were with Reuben Yap, the project lead from Firo, and Algernon from the Trocador.app exchange service. More episodes recorded and being edited. We hope to have a crypto/privacy/FOSS focus. I'm happy with how they've turned out so far. Check them out.
CashFusion. A privacy technology developed for Bitcoin Cash, we're working with the creator of CashFusion, JF, to write a Dart library so we can integrate it into Stack. We've started a FlipStarter which interested parties can donate to with BCH if they want to see this come to fruition. Donate here!
And a random thing to end on. Do you know the social network CoHost? We didn't. But we have one. Follow us on there if you happen to be on that platform and prefer it to others.
Thanks for your support. Shoot us a donation if you're able. QRs available on our donations page.
]]>Tor. We've got it building, we've got it turning on, so we're in testing. Trying to make sure all of the network connections go through it. This is harder than you think, as some of the libs we use for cryptocurrencies - like Monero - handle their own networking. So we gotta dig deep deep deep into these libs to find where connections are being made. Annoying and time consuming. But the actual difficult part is behind us I think. Soon (tm).
Themes. We're literally like 99% done with this. We built a cool little open-source theme server thing that hosts the themes. The wallet connects to it and pulls the info and displays it, and you can download them, and yeah! It all works. Honestly, it would be out today, but we're clicking through the whole app to make sure we didn't get a color or icon wrong during the migration (already found a couple little bugs). Monday for sure on this one though. Like it's literally done besides a couple cosmetic bugs. Oh, and the server thing comes with explicit instructions to add your own theme. Which means, anyone (yes even you) can make a theme for Stack Wallet and make a PR to the repository. That's right, your theme might potentially be in Stack Wallet for all to download. Pretty cool, eh?
Trocador! For those of you who don't know, Trocador is a swap service that aggregates other swap services, and respects your privacy. We try to keep high-quality and privacy preserving swap services on our app, and Trocador fits in well alongside ChangeNOW and MajesticBank. More options for our users!
Watch-only wallets. Another oft requested feature. We've completed designs for them. But trying to get a grip on the many xpub, ypub, and zpub stuff. This is in the works. We'll hopefully see it live soon.
Duo. Working on porting everything to Duo this weekend (your welcome) and Monday. Should have a release of Duo with all of the changes (including theme stuff) alongside the Stack release Monday or Tuesday. This includes:
Misc. We took some time to get another couple easy wins this past couple of weeks. Stuff like an option in the security settings to randomize your PIN pad every time. I personally hate this feature, but some people like it, so in it goes. We're also working on custom PIN lengths (like 6 or 8 digits). Once again since people asked. Other housekeeping items like setting up an Issues template since we're getting more and more of those (both a good and a bad thing). Oh! Another cool one. Custom block explorers. You can now go into Advanced settings and set your own custom block explorers per coin.
Bug fixes. Fixes to Epic Cash, fixes to Wownero (still crashes when trying to make a new wallet on iOS but not restoring, odd. Also still need to update to latest point release), fixes to Firo starting next week. Will probably take a week soon here for some heavy spring cleaning. Particularly on iOS. What an annoying platform to develop for. BCH 0-conf transactions were perpetually pending, even when they got in a block. Fixed.
Next week: Finally finishing up themes, more Tor work, next Duo release, maybe watch-only wallets if we can figure a few stuff out. I'm happy with our progress. I feel like Stack is really becoming a wallet that people want to see and use. Good UX, lots of coins (or only two if Duo), in-app swapping, privacy conscious from the get-go, and plenty of advanced features that are easy to find for power users, but hidden away enough that if you never want to touch them, they're not cluttering up your UI.
LASTLY! Don't know if you missed it, but Cypher Stack (the team behind Stack Wallet), are working on something new. A brand new FOSS app. Teased on their Twitter.
Thanks for your support. Shoot us a donation if you're able. QRs available on our donations page.
See you all next week!
]]>To get started, log into your app and navigate to the settings menu (gear button) at the top right. From here select Advanced near the bottom of the listed options. Once on this screen, make sure to toggle Enable Coin Control to ON.
Desktop views will be shown beneath mobile views for each step.
Afterwards head back to the main My Stack screen and open the wallet that you’d like to use (hint: must be coin control compatible, i.e. BTC, BCH, LTC, DOGE, NMC, or PART). Looking to the menu along the bottom of your wallet screen, select the More option and then Coin Control from there.
You should now be able to see the available (spendable) outputs in your wallet. You can also switch the view to Frozen Outputs to review or unfreeze any that have been made unavailable for spending. In order to select any of these outputs to change its status, simply touch/click on the coin symbol beside it and then freeze/unfreeze at the bottom of your screen.
Frozen outputs cannot be used for any future transactions until manually unfrozen. Because of this, the Available Balance in your wallet may reflect a lower amount than what can be seen in your Full Balance. When in doubt, always check for any frozen outputs that may have gone forgotten!
You also have the option to sort your outputs in several different ways. To try this, select the icon (3 lines) at the top right of the coin control page, then choose between sorting by the age of the output, its address, or its value.
In order to see more detailed information about an individual output, simply touch or click on the amount itself. From there you will be able to view and/or edit its status, address, transaction ID, number of confirmations, and freeze reason (note: freeze reasons simply serve the purpose of describing why outputs were initially set aside as unavailable for spending). This last section may be autofilled with context from previous activity, but can always be customized to suit different circumstances.
From this point, transacting with coin control turned on is a breeze. After you’ve chosen a wallet to use and initiated the sending process you may fill out all other forms as usual and underneath the amount to send, select Coin Control>Select Coins. This will bring you to a screen much like before where you have the opportunity to view your available and frozen outputs and choose which in particular to spend from.
Then once you’ve made your selection(s), that’s it - you’re ready to send!
This is one easy-to-pick-up feature that puts further control of your funds into your hands. Try taking advantage of coin control when you #BuildYourStack with Stack Wallet!
]]>Themes. More work done on this. Nothing exciting. Just preparing the Stack suite to handle the new formats under the hood. Almost done here, I think.
Binary building. Again, more progress here. We've made some great strides, but ran into some difficulties. Had to be set aside this week to make way for…
PayNyms. Done. Checked. The fixes we wanted to ship last week have been shipped. Should be working better, SegWit change addresses added, etc. etc. Try them out and let us know if you have to do things like rescan for funds to show up. That should all be fixed now. This is a big one. Woohoo!
Duo. All of our big changes over the past few weeks have been ported to Duo, which has a new release ready for everyone to download. Includes all the UI/UX, animations, PayNym, and under-the-hood work we've done.
Misc bug fixes. Always. Never ending.
Another small thing! You're reading this now on our brand new on-site blog as opposed to on social media! Woohoo! Another little thing that's been on our list forever has now been crossed off. And don't worry, there's no analytics of any kind on this website, and it's completely JavaScript free! That means you can use our onion address: http://stack26ttbdmof5g5zdmpipdjgso7bnxadattammo3k3jdckl3evwwad.onion/ AND our i2p address: stackwallet.i2p.
Still being looked at: lightning, whirlpool designs, and watch-only wallets.
As always, you can see all of our work in progress on our github: https://github.com/cypherstack/stack_wallet/commits/staging
See you all next time!
]]>Tor integration took several strides this week. We're piggybacking off of the great people over at, who maintain a dart interface for a cross-platform Rust library. But we're not just mooching. We're contributing upstream also. Tor should be in Stack Wallet and Duo very soon, which takes us one big step closer to whirlpool.
Themes. We love themes, and we know you all do too. We get lots of positive comments about them. But the more themes we add, the more images, the more animations, and more, which bloats the size of the app. We've been working on redoing the way themes are done under the hood to allow for a theme storefront of sorts (don't worry, they'll be free). This means the app will be downloaded with just light and dark, but the user can easily navigate to the storefront in the settings and download only the themes they want. We'll also allow a way to install themes by a file on the device so anyone can download them in a way they think is most secure and import them manually.
Binary building. Currently, we build everything from source every time we do builds, as is the FOSS way, but some of our submodules take forever to build. 45 min build times aren't conducive to rapid development and the build process can be frustrating for volunteer devs. So we're making the process easier by pushing our self made libraries to a repo and adding additional scripts to pull from those so we don't have to build the submodules all the time. It'll make it super easy for volunteers to contribute also. Don't worry, the normal build-everything-from-source way is still there too, and we'll be doing builds that we're pushing live that way still. Mostly a convenience thing for devs.
PayNyms. There are a couple small things with paynyms we've found since we've launched. Adding SegWit change addresses rather than just legacy, some sends not showing up without having to do a full rescan, etc. Everything works mostly, but there's a few hiccups. We've made good progress in addressing those, and a fix for those problems should be up by next week.
Animations. We have stellar designers, illustrators, and animators. But we spend so much time on UX, that we have to jump to the next thing rather quickly to keep up. Our focus on ensuring proper information flow and good UX means we've sacrificed on the things that push the app from just an easy and excellent experience, to a beautiful one. We're taking a bit of time to address this now with adding a few animations and cleaning up a few icons. Not a big thing to notice, but one that we hope will further push us ahead.
Misc bug fixes. Always.
Prelim research on lightning, whirlpool designs, and watch-only wallets.
You can see all of our work in progress on our github: https://github.com/cypherstack/stack_wallet/commits/staging
Most all of the above is either done or close to being done so next week will probably be a big week for us. Phew! Super long post. Sorry. But we've been busy, so hopefully that news makes up for the long read.
See you all next time!
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